Remember When People Cared About Clean Drinking Water?

It's been a while since we took a look at places in America where people are having trouble with the luxury good we refer to as drinkable water. For example, take the folks in Hoosick Falls, New York. In 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a no-drink order regarding the town's water supply due to contamination from a toxin produced by the manufacture of non-stick cookware and the like. From The Alt:

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Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA for short, is used in manufacturing to make heat-resistant wiring, stain-resistant fabrics, and nonstick coatings such as Teflon. (It's sometimes referred to as the Teflon toxin.) The chemical had been used at the Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics plant in Hoosick Falls. It has been linked to cancer, particularly cancers of the kidney and the testes. Indeed it was a local resident whose father died of kidney cancer who first identified the pollutant in village water. In August 2014, Michael Hickey tested his home's water and found PFOA, at a level of 540 parts per trillion (ppt), well above the 400 ppt guideline set by the EPA. PFOA is officially an unregulated contaminant–meaning water utilities are not required to test for it–and in 2014 the EPA did not have a scientifically based safe level. The 400 ppt benchmark was an advisory, a guess until more information and more analysis could be done. In June 2016, the EPA revised their determination and lowered the safe level of PFOA to 70 ppt.

The problem, as the residents point out, is that the state and local governments were completely bumfuzzled by the problem while the EPA tried to manage the crisis from afar. The local people are caught in the middle.

"My big frustration is with state and local officials," says resident Michelle O'Leary. "Why didn't anyone say: 'Caution!'–rather than: 'It's OK, until we find out differently.'" O'Leary is particularly vexed by what she sees as a political game of back and forth. The EPA says one thing, the mayor says another. "It's not a game to us. It's our everyday life. We wake up, wash our hands, take a shower. It's our life, 24 hours a day, seven days a week." Resident Jennifer Plouffe wonders if village officials were overly influenced by a recent initiative called "Hoosick Rising," A far-reaching economic development plan to attract new business to the region, especially in the areas of tourism, technology, and media. She wonders if planners thought they could fix the water problem before the potentially harmful news got out. "It was terrible timing," Plouffe says. Indeed, a Times Union article from Dec. 14, 2015 reported as much. The Village Mayor David Borge told Hickey he was worried about the stigma of polluted water on the village's revitalization efforts.

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I mention this only because, over the past two days, the incoming administration's environmental policy was on display through its nominees. On Tuesday, Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke, the nominee to be Secretary of the Interior, faced the Congress and, on Wednesday, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt went before the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee. In both cases, the respective nominees emphasized that, in their opinion, the EPA has run roughshod over state and local governments. Both of them promised, in one way or another, to return a great deal of the job of environmental protection to the states.

Getty ImagesZach Gibson

"National regulations, neighborhood solutions," is the way Pruitt put it. The problem, of course, is that, very often, the "neighborhood solutions" involve having a governor and/or a state legislature gut the local environmental regulations at the behest of corporate interests, which find local officials cheaper and easier to ... influence.

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In North Carolina, for example, the previous governor, Pat McCrory, a former energy company executive, cut the state's environmental quality office by 40 percent and larded other boards and commissions with industry moles. Saying that the EPA will consult with local officials, therefore, becomes something of a dodge because that kind of consultation is useless if the person on the other end of the phone isn't there. Also, as we saw in Hoosick Falls, very often, when EPA regulations conflict with the local business community, the regulations get ignored in favor of local imperatives. At this point, when the water goes bad, the EPA is the last arbiter.

Zinke was a fairly standard Republican on these issues—one of those hunter/fisherman conservationists who swear eternal fealty to the legacy of Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, Republican heroes of another century. He is an adherent of the current conservative position on the climate crisis—that climate change is real and that human activity contributes to it, but who can say to what degree? (Actually, almost everyone studying the crisis does, but never mind.)

Pruitt said much of the same thing, but he did so in the face of a track record that makes what he said sound as fake as blue money. There is no question that Pruitt's entire public career has been about running the ball for Oklahoma's energy producers. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon produced a letter under Pruitt's signature that was almost entirely copy-and-pasted from a letter Devon Energy complaining about regulations concerning methane.

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Merkley: This is relevant because methane is a global warming gas, more potent than co2. Gas companies didn't like this because, well, it presented a vision of natural gas being more damaging environmentally than was previously understood. Devon Energy is one of the groups that sought to cast a doubt on the scientific information, and they came to you to be the spokesperson at the—will you be our mouthpiece and casting doubt and send a letter we drafted to the EPA? And you sent that letter…You acknowledge that 97% of the words came directly from Devon Energy?

Pruitt: I have not looked at the percentages.

Merkley: The statement that is been analyzed many times. All of the 1016 words except for 37 words were written directly by Devon Energy?

Moreover, Pruitt's nomination presents to the Congress an exercise in absurdity remarkable even in the context of the extended exercise in absurdity that is this entire inauguration week. At the moment, Pruitt is the plaintiff in 19 lawsuits against the very agency he has been nominated to lead. None of the eight remaining lawsuits are likely to be settled before Pruitt takes his new job. This led Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts to an extended pursuit of an answer as to whether or not Pruitt would recuse himself from these actions, or if he would become, as Markey put it, "plaintiff, defendant, judge, and jury." Pruitt responded with a vigorous buck-and-wing.

Markey: In your ethics agreement, you have said you would not participate in any matter that is ongoing litigation within one year, but isn't it true that these lawsuits may very well continue for much longer than one year?

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Pruitt: I have the letter from the ethics counsel at the EPA. The one year time period is intended to address covered entities that I serve in chairmanship or an officer capacity. If there's a matter that arises before the EPA, in one year time period, a matter or case that involves those entities than the recusal would be in order, but that's really the focus of the one year timeline.

Markey: Will you agree to recuse yourself from those lawsuits which you brought as the attorney general of Oklahoma against the EPA, not just for one year, but for the entirety of the time that you are the administrator of the EPA? Will you commit to doing that?

Pruitt: I'm saying that the EPA ethics counsel has indicated those cases will require review by the ethics counsel, and recusal may potentially be in order, and I will follow the guidance.

Markey: This is a clear line for the American public given your record in suing of the EPA on all of these matters that, if you don't agree to recuse yourself, then again you become plaintiff, defendant, defendant, judge and jury on the cases you are bringing right now as attorney general of Oklahoma against the EPA. The EPA is for all of the people of the United States, not just the fossil fuel industry of Oklahoma. You are not committing, and I think that's a big mistake, to recuse yourself from those cases… What the American people are expecting is that the EPA doesn't turn into every polluter's ally. The only way to ensure that is for you to recuse yourself.

Pruitt: Senator, I can say to you that I will recuse as directed by the EPA ethics counsel.

There's the Hoosick Falls problem again. There's no final arbiter. Suppose this administration hires, say, Steve Harvey or Scott Baio as the EPA ethics counsel? (Sure, go ahead and laugh. You'll be sorry.) He's liable to tell Pruitt anything he wants to hear and then, as Markey pointed put, Scott Pruitt can negotiate a settlement between Scott Pruitt and Scott Pruitt. I don't think ol' TR would think this is what he had in mind.

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